I Never Promised You a Rose Garden Chapter 17

Doris Rivera comes back to the ward, and Deborah is disappointed that her myth has relapsed to madness. Deborah wants to know why Doris had to come back, but she never gets her answer.

Deborah hurts her ankle and has to go to a medical hospital where people stare at her because they know she is a mental patient. When Deborah tells Furii about the way they treated her, Furii warns that she will have to get used to that and try to help people on the outside understand mental illness. Deborah insists that she can't help them because she can only infect them with her poisonous "nganon" Part 2, Chapter 17, Pg. 142. This same essence that infects healthy people also attracts people who are suffering like she is. She tells Furii of a girl at the camp where she was ostracized. That girl was an outcast, also, and she and Deborah took comfort in each other. Deborah ended their friendship when the girl asked her to beat her with a belt. Deborah was frightened by the outright admittance of illness, but she knows that if the same thing happened to her on the ward, she wouldn't be frightened. The relief of knowing that she is crazy is a great comfort when people told her for so long that there was nothing wrong with her.

Topic Tracking: Friendship 9

After Deborah tells Furii this story, they talk about the contradiction of Deborah's helplessness and her all-powerful nganon. Slowly Furii is leading Deborah to look at the world outside of her and the alternate reality she has created.